03/16/2018

You can’t see or measure the love you have for a child or friend, but it is real and true. It changes lives. You can’t see or measure guilt or forgiveness or joy, but they are still real and true. They change lives. So to say, ‘If I can’t see or measure it, it’s not real or true’ is to assert that your own senses are the only gauge of reality. It’s like you’re an investigator at the scene of a crime and you’ll only accept finger prints as legitimate evidence. So immediately, you dismiss the testimony of credible eye witnesses; you dismiss any other non-forensic clues already in the room; and you even dismiss exploring the motives of various potential suspects. Before you even start, you’re limiting your perspective. The same is true for materialists. They’re limiting their perspective before they even start. A person who thinks this way would hear about a potential “miracle” and tell you that it didn’t really happen right out of the gate. Why? Because it can’t be measured and doesn’t fit with what they already think they know about their interpretation of reality. But a true scientist would study the evidence, and then observe (a) that there is either a measurable explanation, or (b) that in the absence of a measurable explanation, something may have happened which we simply can’t yet explain. So what a lot of people call “science” isn’t actually science. It’s a way of understanding reality—a philosophical outlook—called “materialism.”— Matthew Ruttan (from, Are science and faith opposites?)

Christians today are facing more challenges than ever. The Poached Egg exists to equip Christians to meet those challenges and be more confident in their faith and become more effective witnesses for Christ. If you find these articles and posts useful, please consider partnering with me in 2018 to continue this work that God has laid on my heart. As someone once said, the Gospel is free, but someone has to pay for the plumbing. You can become a monthly partner for just as little as $5 a month (that’s only $60 a year), the price of a gourmet cup of coffee. Special one time gifts are welcome and encouraged as well. Will you help?

Christians today are facing more challenges than ever. The Poached Egg exists to equip Christians to meet those challenges and be more confident in their faith and become more effective witnesses for Christ. If you find these articles and posts useful, please consider partnering with me in 2018 to continue this work that God has laid on my heart. As someone once said, the Gospel is free, but someone has to pay for the plumbing. You can become a monthly partner for just as little as $5 a month (that’s only $60 a year), the price of a gourmet cup of coffee. Special one time gifts are welcome and encouraged as well. Will you help?

It All Comes Back to God

by Alan Shlemon

There’s a reason the Bible begins the way it does. Notice the first verse: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). God is there before anything begins, and He starts it all. Without Him, there would be nothing. The universe and everything in it is His kingdom. He’s the King, and it’s His domain.

The rest of the Bible that follows from that verse is predicated on the idea that there is a God. Every creature is His. Every natural law is His. Every moral truth is His. Without Him, we have no foundation for our theology, ethics, or values. Everything can be traced back to Him.

This has significant implications for what we believe. Nothing makes sense without first acknowledging God exists and has made all things. Remembering that can help us better understand discussions with people who don’t share our religious convictions.

I often find myself talking to skeptics about morality. They are astonished that I would uphold certain sexual ethics, for example. In one sense, I understand their bewilderment. Biblical morality can appear archaic or unnecessarily limiting if it seems to be without just cause. If there’s a God who made us, though, then His moral rules are timeless, relevant, and justified.

This is why it’s often pointless to justify a sexual ethic on its own merit when talking to a skeptic. If you want to show that the ethic is good, you can predicate its reasonableness on the existence of God. That’s because all things come back to God. Let me offer a few examples…

Christians today are facing more challenges than ever. The Poached Egg exists to equip Christians to meet those challenges and be more confident in their faith and become more effective witnesses for Christ. If you find these articles and posts useful, please consider partnering with me in 2018 to continue this work that God has laid on my heart. As someone once said, the Gospel is free, but someone has to pay for the plumbing. You can become a monthly partner for just as little as $5 a month (that’s only $60 a year), the price of a gourmet cup of coffee. Special one time gifts are welcome and encouraged as well. Will you help?

It Takes Persistence to be an Ambassador for Christ

by Sheryl Young

Ryan Crews is the first Legatus Christi recipient we are introducing our readers to this spring. The Legatus Christi Certificate is our recognition to students who are outstanding pupils of apologetics and who apply it on and off campus.

Ryan is receiving this special designation as an LC recipient for starting and leading a successful apologetics club at his university. Glenn Smith, RC’s regional director for the state where Ryan goes to school, has mentored Ryan and says of him:

“Ryan has shown tenacity and maturity. He saw a vision for an apologetics club and worked diligently to get one started. He worked with several faculty and scholars to influence the school's decision to allow the group. In the meanwhile, Ryan kept up with his apologetics studies, attending training in the summers and self-study year-round. He participated in a panel discussion with recognized scholars, facilitated meetings, planned the growth of the group, and responded to difficult challenges to Christianity. His ability to defend the Christian faith is well-rounded and deep. We are proud to have Ryan a recipient of the high honor of Legatus Christi.”

We spoke with Ryan about his background and his discovery of apologetics.

Q: When did you find Christ as your Savior, and how did that come about?

A: I grew up in a Christian home, so it is hard for me to say exactly when I accepted Christ as savior – my childhood was defined by steady spiritual growth, but no lightning conversion. That being said, there was certainly a catalyst that caused me to take my faith, and the intellectual defense of it, far more seriously; when I was in middle school and high school, I was surrounded by peers that did not share my faith, and sometimes outright attacked it. I had two possible courses of action to deal with the doubts that this caused: I could either give up my faith without a fight, or I could go looking for answers. I choose the latter, and my life has never been the same since…

Christians today are facing more challenges than ever. The Poached Egg exists to equip Christians to meet those challenges and be more confident in their faith and become more effective witnesses for Christ. If you find these articles and posts useful, please consider partnering with me in 2018 to continue this work that God has laid on my heart. As someone once said, the Gospel is free, but someone has to pay for the plumbing. You can become a monthly partner for just as little as $5 a month (that’s only $60 a year), the price of a gourmet cup of coffee. Special one time gifts are welcome and encouraged as well. Will you help?

Top 101 Theological Questions in 2018 (According to Google)

by Todd Clay

The top 101 questions people ask about God and Christianity based on Google search query data – with links to Biblical answers.

Ever wonder what other people think about God?

Google maintains a database of questions (aka “search queries” or “keywords”) that users type into that ubiquitous blank box every day. Many questions are driven by news events like “who won the Warriors game last night?” Others questions are evergreen like “how to make rice”. Still other questions relate to God, Christianity, and other topics the Bible addresses.

This post shows the top 101 questions people ask about God and Christianity which includes theological, apologetic, philosophical, and other questions people ask that could be considered theological. The most searched questions are at the top – and so on.

In addition, each question is linked to a helpful resource to help further your knowledge about the question from a Biblical perspective. Some of these questions are answered on this site, but most are answered on other helpful sites…

Christians today are facing more challenges than ever. The Poached Egg exists to equip Christians to meet those challenges and be more confident in their faith and become more effective witnesses for Christ. If you find these articles and posts useful, please consider partnering with me in 2018 to continue this work that God has laid on my heart. As someone once said, the Gospel is free, but someone has to pay for the plumbing. You can become a monthly partner for just as little as $5 a month (that’s only $60 a year), the price of a gourmet cup of coffee. Special one time gifts are welcome and encouraged as well. Will you help?

Christians today are facing more challenges than ever. The Poached Egg exists to equip Christians to meet those challenges and be more confident in their faith and become more effective witnesses for Christ. If you find these articles and posts useful, please consider partnering with me in 2018 to continue this work that God has laid on my heart. As someone once said, the Gospel is free, but someone has to pay for the plumbing. You can become a monthly partner for just as little as $5 a month (that’s only $60 a year), the price of a gourmet cup of coffee. Special one time gifts are welcome and encouraged as well. Will you help?

An Investigation: The Lofty Claims of Jesus

by Sheri Bell

Was Jesus Just a Man, or God?

No doubt about it, Jesus of Nazareth has been the dominant figure in the history of the western culture for almost twenty centuries. Talk about staying power! Equally constant: the debate about who He is.

Almost everyone who has heard of Jesus has developed an opinion about Him. That’s to be expected, as He is the most famous, and controversial, person in world history.

Was Jesus just a man — or, as Jesus Himself claimed, God in human form?

The controversy about Jesus extends to this core identity. On the one hand, Christians believe Jesus is the divine Son of God, the fulfillment of ancient biblical prophecies, the promised Savior of the world.

Skeptics, on the other hand, assert that Jesus was neither divine nor claimed to be. He was possibly a great teacher — just one among many who claimed to possess the truth. But Jesus’ claims of power and authority, they say, were proved exaggerated when the Romans nailed His body to a cross. Anyone who claimed to see Jesus alive afterward, they add, simply experienced grief-induced visions.

Heck, spend even five minutes reading any published book by a prominent skeptic, and you just might find yourself questioning if anything you believe about Jesus contains a nugget of truth. But that’s not a bad thing, if it motivates you to deeper study. If we’re going to call ourselves “followers of Christ,” we should have a solid basis for doing so. God calls to be committed, not lukewarm.

So which is it?

Was Jesus a mere mortal — the loving, peacemaking cult hero that many today make Him out to be? Was He a revolutionary, thwarted in His plans to set up a new political kingdom? Or was Jesus God, as He boldly claimed, despite knowing that He was courting retaliation by the Jewish leaders and Rome by doing so?

As Alister McGrath, Oxford professor of science of religion, writes: “The challenge posed to every succeeding generation by the New Testament witness to Jesus is not so much, ‘What did He teach?’ but ‘Who is He? And what is His relevance for us today?'”

To answer that, we need to look at some of the lofty claims Jesus made, as recorded by the New Testament writers…

Christians today are facing more challenges than ever. The Poached Egg exists to equip Christians to meet those challenges and be more confident in their faith and become more effective witnesses for Christ. If you find these articles and posts useful, please consider partnering with me in 2018 to continue this work that God has laid on my heart. As someone once said, the Gospel is free, but someone has to pay for the plumbing. You can become a monthly partner for just as little as $5 a month (that’s only $60 a year), the price of a gourmet cup of coffee. Special one time gifts are welcome and encouraged as well. Will you help?

For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. 2 Corinthians 10:3-5

The Poached Egg Worldwide

For we did not follow cleverly contrived myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ; instead, we were eyewitnesses of His majesty. 2 Peter 1:16